


Enemy of my Enemy

by cricket_aria



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 11:25:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4917754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year into life in Midgar Tifa finds a friend in the midst of the slums.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enemy of my Enemy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kharasma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kharasma/gifts).



A year in Midgar had taught Tifa she'd been right to never feel the draw toward the city that almost everyone else in Nibelheim younger than thirty had been dragged away by. The first few weeks hadn't been so terrible, or maybe it was just that everything _else_ in the world had been awful enough that her surroundings had seemed fine in comparison, but as soon as the clinic she'd been recovering in had reached the end of the service her master's coin had paid for and she was deemed stable enough to survive without them she'd been cast out to discover just how heartless the city could be.

There'd been no work to be found for a girl whose ability to work long shifts or do heavy lifting had been stymied by being skewered on a sword, and little generosity in a place where even the children needed to scramble for every coin they could find. Rather than garnering pity, as they would have back home, her wounds had only aroused suspicion that she was either hiding a violent streak or was putting on an act to weasel sympathy out of people. It would have broken her father's heart to see the nights she'd been reduced to picking through the trash for scraps of food or things she might sell to buy something better, but at the time she'd just been grateful that at least magic came free; whenever her wound bothered her too badly she'd been able to find someone willing to spare a cure to keep it healing well.

Things had gotten better since then. Finding Johnny had helped with that, the familiar face almost as much as a comfort as the information he'd given her about an abandoned building in the sector where he lived. Left to her own devices she never would have imagined just taking a place for herself, but he'd been there long enough to understand that taking whatever you could find was just how things were in the slums and to teach her those lessons in turn.

She'd found some type of equilibrium since then, one made steadier when she'd found a still-working pinball machine in the dump and then, on a whim, had bought a couple bottles of whiskey that was less of a rot-gut than could normally be found in Sector 7 to see if anyone who didn't want to drag themselves to the Wall Market for a drink would be willing to buy it from her by the shot. Between the two she'd made enough to buy a little food and a little more booze, and before long she'd found herself the youngest bartender she'd ever heard of.

It was a life. Not one she would have chosen, not one she especially enjoyed, but better than many people in the slums could claim. She had found something like stability.

And then she found something like a purpose.

* * *

A baby was crying. Not the usual squalling of an unhappy but otherwise healthy infant, but a weak thin scream of distress.

Tifa's first instinct was to ignore it, and she hated herself a little for that. Even though she herself had been a victim of Midgar's distrust it was something that the city quickly ground into every living soul within it; there was no small number of people in the slums who were quick to take advantage of a soft heart.

She refused to let the city do that to her, to eat the kindness out of her and leave a knot of suspicion in its place. Once, not that long before, she'd been the one who'd help when no one else would. The one who'd brave the mountain on even the worst days to guide travelers through its passes, or to search for those who'd never returned from it. She'd lost so much with her town, if she lost her heart to Midgar's teeth that would be it; Sephiroth would have killed her as much as everyone else in Nibelheim, even if her body was left to walk and breath.

So she veered into the alleyway she heard the cries coming from, ignoring the way it made a nearby man look at her like she was a fool.

Almost she regretted her choice when she found the man hidden by a dumpster, his massive muscles and the gun where his arm should be flashing danger signs all across her mind. She forced herself to stop, to look past that, to how livid the wound just above the gun still was, to how he was awkwardly propping the baby--closer to a toddler than she had guessed from the sound of its cry--up against his knees, unable to hold it properly when his good hand was trying to offer it the baby food smeared on his finger. To hear the desperation in his voice as he murmured to her "C'mon Marlene, y'just gotta eat a little. I know you want your mama's milk, but Eleanor ain't around no more."

And she saw how as he said that he glanced at the plate above them with a seething hatred that echoed in her own heart, although she'd learned to hide it while living so close to Shinra that wearing her feelings openly would be courting more trouble than she could afford.

Those things together made her offer, "Could I try?" At his startled glance she added, "It might just be--" that the stink of the trash combined with his unwashed smell was making the baby distrust the food was what she thought, but politeness caught her tongue and instead she awkwardly finished "Maybe she just needs a woman's touch."

He looked suspicious, but then people in Midgar almost always did. "Don't think I'll let you take her, girlie," he said, shifting his arm so the barrel of the gun was pointed in her direction. "You wouldn't be the first who tried."

"God, no! How could someone-- no, I just want to help." Tifa exclaimed, hoping with everything in her that someone had just tried to take the baby for fostering, to get her off the streets, nothing worse than that. Hoping that even Midgar couldn't be so cruel. When he still looked doubtful she moved a hand to her stomach, pushing up her shirt to let him see the bottom of the scar that slashed down her sternum to almost reach her navel. Even after a year of healing if was still a bright and ugly thing, the only consolation she could give herself when she looked at it being that at least Sephiroth was a _neat_ murderer, his slash as straight as Masamune's edge without the slightest waver. "They've hurt me too," she told him quietly enough that no one else would be able to hear, allowing her hidden loathing to enter her voice. "I'll help if I can."

He stared at the scar for a long moment, then slowly offered her the baby and her food. "If y'know where to find milk that you'd trust ain't gone sour for her bottle, that'd be the best thing. She'd started moving onto mush when her mama was... when she passed on, but she's still not happy about it. Found livestock to get milk from on the road, but no luck here."

Nothing could live in Midgar to provide milk, Tifa's mind filled in, nothing but humans too stubborn to admit the land there hated them, and the few poor pets they'd dragged along to live with them. And no one wanted to feed their daughter dog milk if they could help it.

She could tell just from holding her that the girl was a little light for a baby, but not so much as to be frightening; he was telling the truth about being able to feed her until recently. The baby's face screwed up more than ever for a moment at finding herself in a stranger's arms, but Tifa managed to shoosh her quieter. It had been a long time since she'd held a baby, when almost all the younger citizens left Nibelheim there were few people left to start families and the last time there'd been a new birth Tifa herself had been too young to be allowed to hold her for more than a minute, but she thought she did well enough. "I might be able to find formula, but milk I wouldn't trust. Hey sweetie, hey, don't you want a little bit of these?" She glanced at the label of the babyfood jar, "Ooh, peaches, those are tasty. Why don't you try just a little bite?" She scooped a little onto her finger and brushed it over Marlene's lips. A stroke or two and she latched on, suckling away the fruit mush, apparently objecting less to Tifa's much cleaner hand. The man's whole body seemed to sag at the sight, tension draining out of him.

"Thank for that, Miss," he said, tone suddenly much more polite. It seemed a little awkward on him. "I dunno what I'd have done if I couldn't get her to eat. She's all I--"

 _All I have left_ Tifa silently filled in the blank at the look of pain that flashed across his face. She wondered if he knew how lucky he was to at least have something; whatever had happened to the man at least it hadn't razed every last thing he'd known and loved from the face of the planet. "Hey, listen," she said, barely even realizing she was planning on making an offer until she'd already opened her mouth to say it, "If you need a place to stay I have room. I can't just walk away and leave a baby without a home, and I... I could use a bouncer anyway. It's not that safe for a girl on her own out here." She didn't think it worth mentioning that she could throw most troublemakers out on their asses herself except on her very worst days, she wasn't going to insult his pride by making it completely obvious she was just asking out of pity.

He snorted, but didn't seem upset but the offer at least. "Girl, just askin' strangers to your place out of nowhere ain't a way to make yourself safer."

"Well, we won't be strangers for long, right? I'm Tifa. Tifa Lockhart." She shifted the baby onto her hip so she could hold out a hand for him to shake. "And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, aren't they?"

He still looked doubtful, but took her hand. "Barret Wallace. And... well, suppose it can't hurt to see how things go. For Marlene."

"For Marlene," Tifa agreed easily enough.

Midgar was a terrible place. One that devoured the souls of its citizens and left them nothing but empty-eyed stacks of skin and bones. But, Tifa thought, if she could keep it from eating the kindness out of her heart, maybe she could still keep her life worth living.


End file.
